EURYTHMICS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-20, 27-34 and 49-64, and 1 more place -- 76.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
131 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
111
LENGTH
3:23
DIFFICULTY
21/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 131 BPM
SWEET DREAMS (ARE MADE OF THIS) · BAR 1

It is played on floor tom and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 21 out of 100, so the beat is not the hard part: what costs you is everything around it, the joins and the fills.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 98 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 3 of them. Nothing is a matter of opinion: each rung has a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next one.

  1. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 98, 115 and 131 BPM, and the gate at each one is 8 loops in a row with no wrong note and no wobble in the time.

PRACTISE THIS BEAT →

Questions

What drum beat does Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) use?

A one-bar groove on floor tom and kick, in 4/4 at 131 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 76.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-20, 27-34, 49-64 and 71-111. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 21 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 111 BARS ANALYSED